Saturday, 19 February 2011

I have read about this polish in other blogs so I thought that I would give it a try. It is available from an online store called Born Pretty and it’s ridiculously cheap! I believe the shipping was free, but don’t quote me on that.

The Kelier Crack Polishes are a little different to the regular shatter polishes that you can get from Barry M, OPI and China Glaze, this one shrinks slowly and leaves you with a veining pattern on each nail, whereas the others look more like shattered pieces.

There is a wide variety of colours available in the Born Pretty online store, I opted for purple and red.

Delivery took a while, but the package was coming from Singapore and I ordered while they were away on holiday. When the package got here, it was quite confusing as the customs label read “electronics” and I was wondering what on earth I’d been sent. Inside was my two Kelier Crack polishes. It’s good news that the polishes did get here, I keep thinking about the possibility of customs looking inside the package and seeing that it doesn’t match the description!

With the shatter/crackle polishes, I find that they are really good if you have had a polish on for a few days and it’s just starting to chip. You just throw on the shatter polish and you have a quick, easy, revamped manicure ready to go for another few days.

That’s exactly what I did with the purple Kelier. I had been wearing my a-england Guinevere polish for 3 days with a top coat, then I applied the Kelier right over the top. Big mistake. The polish cracked alright, but the slightest touch and it flaked right off my nail. Heck, I even blew on one nail and pieces blew right off. Yuck!

I decided to play around with the polish, to see if there was a trick to getting it right. I wanted to cover all my bases before I simply wrote it off.

I removed my nail polish and tried over bare, clean nails. Same thing, blew away and the rest rubbed right off.

I then grabbed two polishes that I thought would look good with the colours, grey for the purple crack and black for the red crack.

Now, the purple one is a really nice colour, it’s a dark purple, almost a violet and I would love to have a regular polish in this colour. The red however, is horrible. It is the colour of Heinz Cream of Tomato Soup. It also does not layer well over darker polishes.

I got a nice pattern of veining from the purple crack over a Barry M grey, I also got a nice pattern from the red crack over a Barry M black, but the colour was terrible.

It seems that this polish is meant to be applied over a fresh colour that is still slightly wet, almost tacky if you like, but not a top coat or polish that has fully dried and hardened.

I repainted my nails with a-england Guinevere and then OPI top coat, let it set for 20 minutes then applied the purple crack over the top. Horrible. Absolutely yucky. It barely cracked and started peeling away, taking Guinevere with it.

I have also tried it over a matte top coat, which also failed miserably. It flaked right off my nails.

I have to say that I am thoroughly disappointed in this polish. I had high expectations and it has let me down.

I will not be buying anymore, and I would not recommend it to anyone. It’s too much of a pain in the backside to get right.

Over fresh polish, refusing to crack

Over old, fully dried polish and flaking off the nails at the slightest touch, or even breeze.

The "red". My camera made the colour look a lot better than IRL.

The darker areas are where it's stuck to my polish, the rest is ready to flake right off the nail.

First and middle finger is over bare nails. Look how disgusting that red is.

Ring and pinky are over Barry M polishes. The purple kinda worked here, but again, red = disgusting.

I just don't understand why other blogs have been giving this polish high reviews. Maybe because they were sent for free?